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« Bloodbath update: Smartphone market at end of June (before the Q2 results) | Main | What is Wrong with This Picture? iPhone Use is Declining? And Symbian Use is Growing? »

July 06, 2011

Comments

Robert

Tomi,
Been following this ongoing trainwreck since the Feb 11 Burning Platform memo. Not involved w. the mobile community, but this is compelling from standpoint of - a business case study. Surely it will be studied for decades, the seemingly wanton destruction of Nokia, and the end of M$ as a mobile platform developer.
Elop and Ballmer will both likely be replaced soon; the BoD's just can't let those clowns continue squandering shareholder value.
Sorry for Nokia, but would be sweet to see Ballmer publicly fired in total humiliation and disgrace. What a jerk. When Win7 phone is finally abandoned like the Kin and Zune, M$ should likely be out of partners willing to dance with the devil.
Really enjoy your writing - looking forward to continued coverage of this industry.

Raymond

Thanks, I learnt much. Why Nokia go with licence wp7 when Symbian development and meego development is free. Zero cost at all. Many staff actually volunteer workers. Also the pace at which Symbian and meego grows is solo fast. I mean 8 months to make a portrait qwerty is an a dilute record speed. Symbian^3 looks so modern and was so loved with its refreshed modern interface. The speedy timely updates are a joy. And e7 and x7 are totally way better than say the sgsii which is no competition. Better hardware and on the world popular Symbian. Many more things I learn but posting from mobile.

Vinícius

Raymond, you're actually right about volunteer work for MeeGo. Just see Maemo and you will see that there ARE a lot of people willing to work for free for the good of Open Source.

Also, Symbian and Nokia are still better than most competition. I'd rather have an n8 than most other phones on the market. Because of
1: Camera, no one does cameras as nokia does. Even the EDOF units are better than 99% of the market.
2: Battery Life.
3: FM TX.
4: Hardware quality. Good Mic, audio quality, signal strenght, GPS lock (Samsung SG2 has problems with it, as did SG1), pentaband gsm and much more.
5: True multi-tasking, this is crutial for me and a lot of people.

That said I own an n900 and will probably buy an n9 regardless. Open source community will do the rest, you will see those volunteer workers can do better than most companies, that's the beauty of open source.


And I can't wait till ELOP is FIRED and we can have Nokia back, launching not only the n9 as the primary phone, but the n950 along with it and many more MeeGo pocket PCs (Maemo and Meego are more akin to PC OS than smartphone OS).

@rodrigottr

I've to confess something.

Every morning I wake up and look on twitter: what kind of intelligently STUPID thing has Elop done today?

Can't wait to see why @staska would choose all letter Bs and his reasons... hahahaha

JCMont

Entertaining post Tomi!

@rodrigottr

@Tomi

On your next post you could invert what you are doing. Instead of showing how Elop is mismanaging Nokia, show how they are mismanaging Microsoft.

A good parasite doesn't suck it's victims energy to the point of death. It just sucks till the point both can live.

In the desperate eagerness of saving Microsoft from it's prison on PC's and ensuring a path for Microsoft to mobile computing they will end by killing their last chance.

Instead they should run that quietly, without anyone notice. Keeping MeeGo, keeping, Symbian. Bringing WP quietly just for experimenting and, with time, do the changing they wanted.

What is going on is simply a funny and ridiculous scandal!

Nok_fan

HATE!

@don_afrim

There is something fishy about this whole thing. The Board is ALLOWING this fool to destroy Nokia, it's as if they have no other choice. Are they at gun point? Somehow someone wants to destroy the only European tech company that's left. Somehow someone wants to destroy the only major operating system (Symbian/MeeGo) that's under European control. If you look at the OS world market share (Windows, Mac, iOS, Android, webOS, WP7, Symbian and BB), 90% is under American control and with the diminish of Symbian and BB that number will go up to 99%.

Harry in Singapore

Exactly from what you have written about what Stephen Elop have done at Nokia, I feel that he is doing a GREAT job at Nokia to enable it to survive this hard period; grow and be great again.

1. Focus on selling a single "value" that Nokia has to offer. Nokia's is more than just a Phone OS or hardware. It's the entire "experience" of owning and using a mobile device and hopefully it would be enjoyable than that closed Apple iPhone.

As a competent user of mobile phones and one of the earliest adopter of the then new Nokia Communicator, I believe very strongly that with a competent Leader, Nokia can be the Number 1 Mobile Device Company again.

2. Mr Elop's actions, to me, are that of a Strong Leader that is facing CRITICAL challenges that either kills Nokia or propel it to Greatness again. I am now using an Android; refused to buy the iPhone and I look forward to buy my first Nokia Windows Phone.

3. The previous Nokia was inert; accumulated lots of user preferences but unable to execute the ideas into products or services and simply had too many people. It was frustrating to even read about it and even worst, to experience it.

4. All the great intentions and hope that simply remained as that!! What a shame then.

5. Nokia needs to be able to execute its plans. I see Mr Elop doing this now.

6. Please don't get me wrong. I love Nokia and I want to be a Nokia customer again; and will be the first to broadcast to everyone how good the new Nokia Windows phone is, esp with Nokia's services on it.

Baudrillard

Elop has placed some of his own Muppets on the board so there's no stopping them!

Why not release the 1Ghz upcoming Symbian phones to instead run MeeGo????

Why only one MeeGo phone????

MeeGo is pure Linux and can be ported to run on anything!

This is a suicide mission by Elop on behalf of Microsoft. All or nothing and it's looking more and more like NOTHING!

Nokia can't afford to let this idiot continue destroying their brand like this!

Bjorn

@Harry in Singapor

Harry, I do agree with you that strong leadership is crutial in rough times and I do agree that the leader has to point out the right direction and have everyone follow him there. However, the leader needs to have a sence of direction otherwise it can all end in disaster. Based on what Tomi writes and what my gut tells me I must say that Mr Elop right now reminds me of the head lemming heading for the ocean =/

Tee

I've been lucky to be able to spend a little bit of time with both a very fresh development version of Symbian and the new N9, and whatever trust I had for Elop's strategic decisions regarding Nokia vanished.

You see, Symbian Anna and Symbian Belle are both a definite improvement. And the N9 seems to be everything Nokia ever needed to take back its share of the market. And Nokia even has a clear strategy for developers being able to produce apps for both platforms at once. But even while Nokia has gotten its stuff back together, Elop has been working in the shadows for half a year perfecting a strategy that now seems just plain foolish. He's placing the corporation's future on something that the carriers and device makers hate, developers and users distrust and Microsoft has problems making usable.

Mister Elop: WP7 is not even a burning platform; it's an unfinished platform, and you're renting it before it's even ready, placing your company's future in the hands of another company. It is clear to everyone now that you didn't come to lead Nokia with Nokia's best interest in mind - you came in with a Microsoft bias, and that bias will cost you and all Nokia employees their future. You of course will get a nice bonus for it; the rest will just have to suffer through it all.

RR

Wow, just wow. This blog went from pure scientificly based to just rant after rant after rant. There is no real information in this post, just like the one with the songtext a few days ago.

Seriously, Tomi was one reputed source a while ago with near spot on analysis. But the hate that's seeping from every corner of this blog lately made it horrendous to read here.

BTW; Elop hasn't done all the right things in his strategy. But the all out blaming and finger pointing is just weak.

Michael


You are missing one very important point. The whole mess Nokia is in was brought by OPK along with his board. Let's be honest. The board of Nokia is incapable of making any decision. The team which stayed with OPK should have resigned. You can only argue if they are incapable or lazy. Why don't write an article about OPK's board and their role in Nokia's dall in the years of 2007-2011.

History has shown us that when companies reach stage which Nokia reached last year you need someone who is capable of making critical and important decisions. Mr. Elop will either live by the sword or die by it. At least someone had guts to speak his opinion.

All those executives at Nokia at critical positions rally have no clue. As Nokia's world was crumbling last year Mr. Niklos Savander was telling the crowd at Nokia World fairy tales about Symbian being no: 1. Anssi Vanjoki was convincing everybody how "BIG" E9 is. On top of that you have Markko Ahtisaari having whole philosophical discussion about "to be, or not to be - the home button enigma".

The whole Nokia's Symbian position is wrong. Simply, the customers don't want it. It's old technology. The same way customers ditched casette tapes, commodere 64, atari or CRT's they are now ditching Symbian. We are not talking Beta which was technologically more advance but marketing/business/licences buried it.

Look how hard it is for Google to set up competition to Facebook. With all the money and resources they are finding it almost impossible. Simply "the train has left the station", same way as N9 has left the station. No matter how wonderful it is (despite the fact it might need some time to have it finished and polished) it would be extremely difficult for Nokia to have it up there competing with iOS and Android. Microsoft, which is a software company, is having trouble gaining market share with WP7, and you expect Symbian to grow with few new icons?

Rino

Tomi... Clap Clap Clap, for you, very, very funny and simple method to find an incompetent CEO, I enjoy your post, - Nokia Members Bord, they know this quiz!. :-(

Matthew Artero

A replacement rate of 18 months means that 66% of phones in use are being replaced every year. The 1.38 billion phones sold last year is only 32% of the 4.3 billion phones in use.

RR

@Leebase

Skype is no reason to boycot anything. If it were to be than MS would simply cut out Skype functionality over 3G for example. Just like they cut out tethering at the mercy of the telco's.

Tomi's implications of it being a major problem are baseless so far. MS won't be so stupid that they will sacrifice carrier love over something like Skype integration of which at this point is even no sign in Windows Phone.

MyNokiaN900

Bear in mind the board of Nokia hired Elop. If Elop is making bad decisions, then the board is making them too. Yes, he is the CEO, but he has to answer to the board or the shareholders as well. One man cannot be responsible for the failure of the company. Impossible! Perhaps the previous CEO screwed the company up and now it takes someone like Elop to step in and make some tough decisions. Still I don't believe it's just him making these decisions. It's a collection of people making bad decisions or good decisions. In the short term they must have a plan, as someone pointed out, how could the let a company that once dominated the world of mobile, just crash and burn. There must be a plan.

I am not a lover of Windows or Windows phones, but I cannot believe all the smart people at Nokia could let a wonderful company go down the tube.

Kalle

As an independent developer of mobile phone apps I find Nokias actions intolerable. While Apple has a steady platform and so does Google, nobody knows what Nokias platform will be. If it is Microsoft, will I bet my time and fortunes upon speculation whether MS/Nokia phones will float or sink? I've used Microsoft development tools and they are better than what Symbian tools and Nokia made a huge mistake not fixing them and the SDK stable and fun to code on. Still, even if Ms/Nokia floats, what will I do meanwhile? I'm not going to start developing software for platform that doesn't have customers. I have to get paid. My options are Apple, Google or Symbian at the moment. What is common with these platforms? Of course that they are already established ecosystem. When I put a free app onto Ovi store I got 20000 downloads in a month from 131 countries (unfortunately paid content isn't as popular). Is there anything like that possible in current Microsoft ecosystem? I don't think so.

Jukka

I believe that MS and Nokia aim for Windows 8 and 2012. Mango is just for filling in a gap.

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